GlassFish to Jboss migration

Question

I would like to learn Java EE. In my opinion Glassfish is more user friendly than JBoss, so I decided use Glassfish for my project.

But, in my location Jboss is more popular than Glassfish, so I have a idea. The idea is:

• I will develop the project on Glassfish server
• When my knowledge will be a bit better, I will migrate the project from Glassfish to JBoss

As far as I know both servers implemented Java EE standard, but is it easy to do in practice?

Answer 1

"If you still prefer developing on Glassfish, you can do it as long as you stick to Java EE Spec. Don't code against any Glassfish specific features."

I think this is a very important point, although GlassFish doesn't have many proprietary APIs - GlassFish is also the Java EE reference implementation. Developing to Java EE APIs means, IMHO, developing a portable application is important. Writing on one and deploying on another is actually a good way of proving application portability up front instead of having to deal with it later. However, if you stick to the standard Java EE APIs, then portability will be much easier regardless.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

If you know you want to deploy in JBoss, I'd recommend developing on JBoss. JBoss AS 7 has some really cool features and is very developer friendly. JBoss AS 7 starts in less than 2seconds on my mac and configuration is in one file and its very easy to test with JBoss AS 7.

Here are some of the very cool features

1. Extremely fast
2. Lightweight
3. Modular
4. Hot, parallel deployment
5. Consistent & Elegant administration
6. Domain management (similar to WebLogic)

If you still prefer developing on Glassfish, you can do it as long as you stick to Java EE Spec. Don't code against any Glassfish specific features.

The main difference/migration effort will be with non-standard deployment descriptors that almost all application servers use beyond standard deployment descriptors.